chmod folder with exec in ant build

I want to chmod recursively in my build.xml and borrowed the following from this post:

<chmod file="${basedir}/foo/**" perm="755" type="both"/>

It's unbelievably slow since that directory is deep and includes a large number of files.
This works much better & faster:

<exec executable="chmod" dir="${basedir}/foo" failonerror="true">
    <arg line="-R 0755 ." />
</exec>

http://osdir.com/ml/user-ant-apache/2010-12/msg00066.html 

http://ant.apache.org/manual/Tasks/copy.html 

http://ant.apache.org/manual/Tasks/mkdir.html 

http://ant.apache.org/manual/Tasks/